Evaluation of Scale Reliability for Unidimensional Measures Using Latent Variable Modeling

This article outlines a readily and widely applicable procedure of reliability evaluation for scales with unidimensional measures. The method is developed within the framework of the popular latent variable modeling methodology, and it accomplishes point, as well as interval, estimation of measuring instrument reliability. The approach can be employed with scale components that are multinormal or, alternatively, follow a range of nonnormal distributions. In addition, the procedure can be utilized with missing data. The proposed method is illustrated with an empirical example.